


death by a thousand cuts

by ivyrobinson



Series: death by a thousand cuts [3]
Category: Anastasia (1997), Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21944785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyrobinson/pseuds/ivyrobinson
Summary: I get drunk, but it's not enough 'cause the morning comes and you're not my baby.
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Series: death by a thousand cuts [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1605637
Comments: 31
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> based on death by a thousand cuts by taylor swift. dimya post break up. flashbacks are in italics.

Dmitry’s identity had been his home, or rather his hometown. Nine years out of his hometown, and his identity had become Anastasia Romanov. Now today was December 24th, and he had neither his hometown nor Anya. What he did have was a lumpy couch to sleep on, and several top shelf bottles of Vodka. Neither of which actually belonged to him. 

He also had a foot kicking his ribs, “Get up, Sudayev, it’s Christmas.”

“You’re Jewish,” he responded to the foot. He lifted his arm up slightly to look, but instead saw a burst of sunlight, and threw his arm back over his eyes. “I’m Jewish.” 

This time the kick was more firm, and he slid his arm off his face and blinked up at the figure of Marfa Spektor standing above him on her couch. She placed a mostly full shot glass of clear liquid into his hands. 

“Mazel tov, Mitya,” she said, before downing a shot of her own. “Now get up, you have until midnight going into the 26th to mourn.” 

Dmitry sat up enough to do a shot of vodka, before sliding down on the couch. “What’s that? 36 hours to mourn nine years of my life?” 

The weight shifted on the couch as Marfa hopped off, and crouched beside him. Her face was close to his, “You were nine when your father was imprisoned and then died, and were put in the system. How much time were you given to mourn the first nine years of your life?” 

“I was a more resilient as a child than I am as an adult,” he muttered. There was a sad ring of truth in that. Dmitry held up his shot glass and she refilled it, the vodka stinging slightly as it overfilled and hit his fingers. 

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Marfa said, even though the reason he had shown up at her door the night before was specifically because she didn’t ask questions and merely had opened up her door and given him a spot on her couch. “What happened between you and Romanov?”

Dmitry sat up, and rubbed his eyes. It was bright and he still wasn’t fully sober from the night before. His mouth was dry yet sticky. The words didn’t want to come out of his mouth, as they would make this nightmare a full reality.

She sighed, and stood up, “I’ll make coffee.”

No one else knew how to avoid talking about emotionally difficult things like him other than Marfa. 

“What’re you doing tonight?” Dmitry followed her out into her small kitchen. 

Marfa shrugged as she filled and started the coffee pot, “I’m sure there’s a party somewhere.” 

Dmitry leaned against the counter, “What if we went to Gleb’s party?”

His friend turned around sharply, “Vaganov’s party?” He probably shouldn’t have brought it up when she was dealing with hot liquid, and he took a discreet step back away from her. “The guy you referred to, just the other day, as Jack-off-a-nov?” 

Well, put it that way it did seem unlikely for him to have brought up. 

He held up his hands, “It’s the only party I know of.” 

Well one of the two parties he knew of, but the only one he’d be welcomed to. And that was probably in question. 

Marfa pulled down two mugs from overhead, “Will Anya be there?”

Anya and Gleb’s parents were business rivals, thus the competing Christmas parties honestly, however, Anya had always felt like it was her duty to keep peace between the next generation. Anya was the only one of her siblings that felt that way. Gleb went along with it, because Anya was beautiful and charming and difficult to say no to. 

“No,” he scoffed, “The Romanov Christmas Gala is tonight, she would never miss it.” 

This much was true. The first year they were together, Dmitry had turned down the invitation to attend. It seemed like such a big deal and an overwhelming idea to be in a ballroom full of Romanovs while wearing a threadbare tux handed down from his friend Vlad. The second year they had been together long enough for her to make it known she’d be very displeased if he didn’t make the effort. So he had attended the past seven years in various different levels of discomfort. 

“Fine,” Marfa sighed, and handing him a cup of coffee. “We can make an appearance at Vaganov’s tonight, but the moment I’m bored I’ll leave. With or without you.” 

Dmitry reached over and poked her in the stomach, “Wear something short. There’ll be nothing more entertaining than Gleb having a stroke.” 

She scrunched her nose in response, “So glad you kept your sense of humor during this...whatever it is with Romanov.”

“Don’t get soft on me, Spektor.”

-  
_“I can’t be your whole life, Dmitry,” Anya said softly, her eyes not quite meeting him. “It’s too much pressure, I love you but I need you to have more than me. I can’t…”_

_There had been something about being around Anastasia that had always had Dmitry feeling a bit pathetic, something he tried to work through and push aside because he knew he had weird hang ups and insecurities about her family’s status and wealth. The way her grandmother, nearly a foot shorter than him, managed to look down at him from heights she herself could never reach._

_He wanted to step back, to argue. It wasn’t true. He had Vlad, but Vlad no longer felt like his friend. Vlad, all tied up in his romance with Anya’s aunt Lily now felt more a part of her world than his._

_Maybe she had thought Dmitry could’ve absorbed himself into her lifestyle the way Vlad had so effortlessly gone into Lily’s, but this was a life his old friend had always envied and wanted for. This opulence and society was something that went against everything he had ever stood for._

_“We need a moment, to reset,” Dmitry agreed, though he wasn’t certain he fully agreed. It seemed time and space would only convince her of the obviousness of their incompatibility. It had once been charming when they were first starting, a naivety he hadn’t known he still possessed. “I’ll go out tonight, I’ll…” His voice trailed off, thinking of what options he had. “I’ll meet up with the girls.”_

_She turned sharply at that, “We have issues and the first thing you do is go running to those three?”_

_“They’re my friends.” Dmitry had known the three longer than he had known anyone else still alive in his life. Long before Anya, and even before Vlad. They had all grown up in the same failing foster system. And were the only other people he really knew outside of Anya, her circle and Vlad._

_“They hit on you in front of me,” Anya countered._

_“They’ve been doing that since we were twelve, Anya,” Dmitry told her. “Nothing has ever been meant by or come of it, and nothing ever will. It’s just how they interact with people.”_

_Once upon a time, when he had first run into Marfa and learned that her, Paulina and Dunya were now living in New York as well, he had thought to introduce them to Anya, thinking some sort friendship would occur between the three. Or at least friendly acquaintanceship would. After all, Anya was charming and friendly and had a way of winning over everyone she met. Including him, if the truth were to be told, he had not gone so willingly in the beginning. And the three girls had survived purely on charm and the ability to get along with others._

_It had not gone that way at all. Instead it had been full of tension. Marfa thought Anya too prissy, and the other two tended to follow wherever Marfa lead. Anya found them to be overly friendly (to him) and crass._

_Anya opened her mouth, and then closed it, and opened it again. “I trust you Dmitry.”_

_Somehow it felt more like a threat than reassurance._  
-

Two cups of coffee, another shot of vodka, and a good hour nap later, Dmitry was woken up again by the pounding on Marfa’s door. For a moment his heart sped up, and then his head caught up to him. He and Anya didn’t chase each other. Once she had chased him, but she no longer felt the motivation or inclination to do so. 

He pulled open the door and was greeted by the sight of Marfa’s two other best friends- Dunya and Paulina. Paulina held a bottle of champagne in her hands, and threw her arms around him, placing a kiss on his lips. 

Dmitry shook his head and pulled away, as she said, “Merry Christmas, Mitya.” 

“Merry Christmas, Polya,” he returned. Then to the other girl, “Dunya.” 

“Afternoon Dmitry,” Dunya responded, alerting to the fact that it was much later than he had originally thought. “I hear we’re going to a party tonight.” 

“Marfa called in the reinforcements,” he stated the obvious, as the girls walked in.

“You can’t only drink vodka all day, and I know that’s what she’d have you do,” Paulina said, holding up the bottle in her hand. “You are also not wearing that to the party tonight.” 

Dunya, trying to find drinkware in Marfa’s pantries and settling on some whiskey glasses for the champagne, turned to look at him. “And you need to shower first.” 

Paulina poured generously into three glasses and he realized he should wonder where Marfa had disappeared off to, then held up her glass as the others did too. “Za nashu druzjbu!”

“Za nashu druzjbu,” Dmitry and Dunya repeated before they did away with the champagne. 

It was cheap, and a bit stale. Tasting more like his old home than the quality fizz that he would’ve been consuming that evening had him and Anya not…

“Okay,” Dunya said, shaking her head and setting aside the glass amongst the shot glasses that he and Marfa had been using earlier in the day. “Let’s go make you hot again, Mitya.” 

He allowed the two girls to steer him in the direction of Marfa’s bathroom. He hoped the steadying feeling of reality never set in.


	2. Chapter 2

The sky was gray but still seemed too bright for Dmitry. The girls had patched together him an outfit of leftover clothes from exes and flings, and he wasn’t certain if the unfamiliar clothing helped his mood or not. The winter jacket was his own, so it was probably poetic that he still looked the same on the outside, even if the inside felt like pieces before a mosaic was put together. 

Marfa had come back with dinner and a plan for them to leave the apartment. 

“Is there a theme to this?” Paulina asked, not looking up from her phone.

Marfa snorted, leaning around Dmitry to look at Paulina, who was on his other side, “Can you imagine Vaganov with a costume party? He’d have to dress as the Grinch.” 

“Do we need invitations to it?” Paulina pressed on, “I’m not going to show up at Gleb’s door and beg.” 

“It’s taken care of,” Marfa responded with a wave of her hand, “Don’t worry about it.” 

“What does that mean?” Dunya asked before Dmitry could. 

Their friend sighed, and then shrugged, “The invitations are taken care of.” 

“That doesn’t sound ominous at all,” Dmitry muttered, and Marfa poked him in the side as she looped her arm around his. 

The snow was falling in a picturesque Christmas snow, falling in soft flakes around them. Different than the heavy sludge that had come with the past few Christmases. In fact, the last time Dmitry could remember such a snow around this time had been...well the first Christmas him and Anya had spent together. Several months before they had gotten together. 

They hadn’t always been on such uneven, bizarre ground. They had started off on equal footing, they had been two kids who had been lost in the system for as far as their memories stretched back. Dmitry hadn’t known an honest days work, because being honest had never gotten him far. It was about survival of the fittest, and that usually came with a scheme or three. He had met up with Vlad several years before an older man with a similar life experience. However, Vlad had always strived for a better life, while Dmitry had merely strived to live. 

The story of the kidnapping and disappearance of Anastasia Romanov was a well known, long before he had met Anya. The Romanovs were a prominent political family in New York who had made as many people happy as they had made people mad. They had disappeared and went into hiding when they had received relentless death threats and threatening gifts. Eventually, they had come out of hiding to announce their youngest daughter, Anastasia, had been kidnapped. At the time, she had been 7 years old. Three years later, her kidnappers had been found, and there had been no trace left of Anastasia. After that rumors swirled that she had escaped her kidnappers and was waiting for the moment to reappear safely, and other rumors swirled that she been murdered three years prior and her remains had been made unfindable. 

The kidnappers themselves, a group of two women and one man, never said either way. Refused to say either way, and died under mysterious circumstances while awaiting trial. It would be analyzed on the news, through Lifetime movies, documentaries throughout the years. The mystery becoming greater than the girl herself. 

There had been sightings throughout the years, of course, but Anastasia sightings were like Bigfoot sightings. Usually made by people not in their right mind. There were other rumors, that the Romanov people did secretly meet with people still who claimed to be her or know where she was. Nothing was ever made public of it. 

Back then, Dmitry and Vlad had been in New Mexico, trying to find a way to a better life. That’s when the harebrained idea had stricken. There were enough Anastasia nuts throughout the United States that would take in people and provide transportation, food, and anything else you needed for an expensive cross country journey provided you had a credible Anastasia. At the time it was either starve, steal a car or try something stupid like this.

Enter Anya. Anya had been abandoned by her parents when she was ten at a Catholic orphanage. She could barely remember her life with them, and could remember even less from when she was young. She had been shuffled between foster families and group homes for about seven years before running away, and had been trying to get to New York City since.

_“There’s just...something, whenever I see New York City, it just feels like home.”_

She had been properly skeptical when they had proposed a theory she had been the lost heiress, Anastasia. But had also pointed out her difficulty remembering her early childhood, the strange circumstances of her parents abandoning her. She too was hungry, and desperate to leave New Mexico. And, after all, weren’t her eyes just that clear blue of the Romanovs. Did she not, too, have a chin similarly shaped to that of young Anastasia. And, Anastasia was from New York City, and would’ve called it home. 

May as well check it out and see if it held the answers to her past. 

And the crazy thing was, after all of that, she had been the lost heiress Anastasia. Something none of them had actually been truly expecting. A blood test confirmed it, she was welcomed back into the protective bosom of her family. 

Dmitry had walked away. They had connected, somewhere along the trip, and had been gravitating towards something more. But he could see the future stretch out in front of them, and there was no place for who he was, and had been, in her life. 

She had disagreed, and brought him into her fold. He had bought into the belief that love could overcome circumstances and obstacles. 

There was no comfort in being right nine years later. 

“Have we ever steered you wrong?” Marfa asked, bringing him back to the very current present. 

That got him to smile slightly, “Do you really want me to answer that?”

His old friend grinned wildly at that, and he allowed the three of them to lead him to the next spot. 

-

“It’s unfair, really,” Dunya was saying to Paulina. 

They had been inside the corner store for about six minutes, as everyone scattered to get what they needed. Dmitry had stayed towards the front, petting the resident cat as she batted the strings from the frayed edges of the Oberlan sweatshirt he was wearing under his jacket. 

“Such is life, Avdotya,” Paulina responded with a shrug. “Look at Dmitry’s eyelashes and tell me that’s fair on him.”

“Nothing is fair about Dmitry,” Marfa chimed in. “Are we all set?” 

Dunya shook her head, “I haven’t gotten anything yet?” 

Her and Paulina had spent the six minutes inside the store chattering about...well, Dmitry hadn’t quite followed. A lot of the conversations with the three of them were like that. Bits and pieces, the rest done through shared memory or telepathy. There abandonment in the United States foster system had not resulted in the reveal of a trust fund at the end 

“Why are we buying cheap champagne and wine if we’re going to Gleb’s?” Paulina questioned Marfa. 

When they were younger, and the times when they were all together, the leadership role had been more evenly split between him and Marfa. Then he had gone his own path as they had gone on theirs, and Marfa had fully taken control of her friendship group. 

As he was currently lost and unmotivated in his own life, he was happy to pass the responsibility off onto an old friend. 

“Because it’s rude to steal all his good stuff and not leave anything behind,” Marfa answered. “It’s etiquette.” 

Dmitry shook his head at her, and she reached passed him to give the cat a pat herself.   
“Maybe I should’ve had you at my side all these years I’ve had to attend fancy parties.” 

“Can you imagine?” Marfa said, handing him a bottle to hold. “You’d be the prince of some small country by now if you had.” 

The song above switched to a familiar Shawn Mendes song, and he sighed. Three heads turned to look at him all at once. Four, if you included the cat, who looked at him because he had stopped stroking her fur. 

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, “Anya would just listen to this song a lot.” 

“Wow,” Paulina breathed. “She really is a basic bitch, isn’t she?” 

Marfa and Dunya pulled her away, and Dmitry set the bottle on the counter in front of the cashier to go wait for the girls outside. It was going to be a long night.

It was going to be a long life.

-

“That’s who the fourth invitation was for?” Gleb Vaganov sounded both put out and unimpressed as he had opened up the door for them. Dmitry would take offense, if it wasn’t the same exact reaction he would have to Gleb showing up to a hypothetical party Dmitry would host. 

“You should know to ask more questions,” Marfa scolded their host. Pressing a kiss to Gleb’s cheek, and he immediately shoved her away. 

“There’s security here who knows to throw you out at the first sign of any trouble,” was all Gleb said in response before disappearing back into the party. 

“He really needs to work on his hosting skills,” Dunya commented, as they all put their jackets up in the properly labeled closet. 

“There’s a lot of skills he needs to work on,” Marfa agreed. “But me? I’m going to find the bar.”

The group moved to the bar, and Dmitry downed a scotch before stepping away from the bar. The party was in full swing, the crush of people so familiar and unfamiliar. He made his way to the edge. Dunya soon joined him, handing him a glass of champagne. 

“You know what impresses me?” Dunya asked, sipping her champagne. “How he really managed to make this place so festive and yet void of personality at once. It truly takes a talent.” 

“If anyone could pull that off, it’s Vaganov,” Dmitry said, out of reflex. Now that he was here, surrounded by the crowd, and the noise and the general holiday spirit, he wanted nothing more than to crawl back to Marfa’s apartment and fall back asleep on her sofa. 

Maybe if he slept until the New Year this would all be a dream and he could go back to his real life.

Dunya clinked her glass against his, “That’s….”

But her voice trailed off from whatever she was going to say, and he followed her gaze to see…. Well, maybe he really was dreaming, because why else would Anya be making an appearance, here at Gleb’s party, when she should be over at her parents right at this moment?


	3. Chapter 3

It was nearly a waltz that had landed Dmitry and Dunya into a cramped bathroom. It looked more like a half bath. There was no shower or bathtub, but a toilet, a sink and a lot expanse of counter. He had no idea what section of the Vaganov bathroom they had ended up in. 

Dunya giggled as she hopped onto the counter and he locked the door. It had been far too close of a call. “I don’t think she saw you.” 

Dmitry nodded, but his attention was still on the door. As though Anya could simply sense him from down the hall, and had come to stand outside this door. There was nothing but silence in the halls.

“I don’t know why I’m panicking and hiding,” he confessed, pulling his hand through his hair. “She’s the one that’s not supposed to be here.” 

It was the night of the Romanov Christmas Eve ball. It went late, maybe not quite as late as this, but Anya had always claimed it was physically and emotionally exhausting of an ordeal for her to go through. She always said this with a beaming smile. It had gotten easier over the years. Maybe to the point where she could now go to her good friend Vaganov’s party when she was done, instead of insisting on crashing at one of her parents guest rooms, as she could hardly stand on her feet afterwards.

Maybe trying to make sure he was okay and comfortable had been the emotionally taxing portion of the evening for her. 

Dunya shrugged, never truly concerned with the antics or thought process of Anastasia Romanov. “So what’s your plan here, Mitya?” 

“Give it another ten minutes and we’re probably clear to leave?” Dmitry ventured. 

She laughed, and he finally turned his attention back to her. “Not right now, tonight, tomorrow, a week from now?”

“Marfa gave me until midnight tomorrow.” 

“For?”

“Getting over whatever it is that happened between me and Romanov,” he paraphrased Marfa’s earlier words to him.

Dunya was looking at him expectedly, and asked, rather kindly, “And what is it exactly that happened between you and Romanov?” 

Dmitry pulled in a deep breath, as he pulled in the words he still hadn’t even formed in his mind yet. “She’s moving to Paris.” 

His friend’s eyebrows shot up, “What?”

“She’s moving to Paris,” he repeated. “Her grandmother offered her and her sister Maria an opportunity over there to work with some architect friend she has over there. Maria accepted, and the whole family is going to spend the summer over there. She doesn’t want to pass up the opportunity or be away from her family again. So she’s going.”

And Paris had always been the goal from the first time they had met. 

“And you don’t want to go to Paris,” Dunya’s voice wavered between a question and a statement. 

Dmitry bit his lip, and shook his head. He didn’t know if he was answering her question or disagreeing with her statement, “She didn’t want to give me the opportunity to decide if that’s what I wanted, because she didn’t want me to go to Paris with her.” 

_“You’ll be miserable, Dima,” she said, deflated. “I can’t ask you to uproot yourself again. Another city, where you won’t have anyone but me and you won’t know the language.”_

Funny, in retrospect, she was always deciding what was best for him in order to rationalize her own desires, or lack thereof in this instance. There was a strain of truth in what she was saying, that was painful to see but his heart rebelled against the thought that he wouldn’t be miserable without her, when staying behind. 

“Harsh,” Dunya whispered. Then lifted her chin up. “You need to rip the bandaid off.” 

Dmitry blinked, “What do you mean?”

“I know you, Dmitry,” Dunya told him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve had her on a pedestal for so many years. You’re going to keep her and the experiences there, and it’s going to make it harder and harder for you to let go.”

“So?” He understood but still didn’t understand what she was getting at. 

“You’re going to hold onto the fact she was the last one to kiss you, to hold you, to do whatever it is couples do,” she broke it down for him. “Start looking at women again, kiss the first girl you see, don’t hold onto these things, preserving them like a museum.” 

Dmitry rolled his eyes, “Are you offering?”

Dunya pulled back, seeming to take in his frame in with her eyes, dragging her hand down slowly the length of his arm from the shoulder where it had rested. “Oh, you know that’s been a long standing offer.” 

_“You cling to your friendship with those girls because you like the attention they give to you,” Anya had thrown at him one, two, multiple times._

Something he had refuted, and meant. Now, in this mess of feelings and confusion, he recognized there could be some truth there. He didn’t know if he necessarily had liked the attention or merely was used to it. 

It was true that nothing had ever come of the girls outrageous flirting with him, but he had always been the one to draw the line.

Now he tried to focus on Dunya’s face, trying to bring out the features he had always passed over and had faded into the background. She was the opposite of a lot of things that Anya had been, except in height. Dark, burgundy lips where Anya’s had always been painted a pale, pink glossy color. It had left shiny smudges on his neck, his cheek, the corner of his lips. Dark eyes, where Anya’s had been that clear Romanov blue. The biggest reminder of her true status staring up at him unblinking when he was pulling away after a kiss with her. Straight black hair, where Anya’s had been soft strawberry blonde curls. 

He looked at her, as she allowed him to look at her, as he saw Dunya’s features come into focus and the thoughts “I could be attracted to her” formed. 

Dmitry pulled back, “I can’t do this.” 

“You need to rip the bandaid off,” Dunya told him. “It doesn’t have to be with me, but the longer you hold on, the harder it is going to be for you to take that leap.” 

Maybe, and he wanted to point out that it was still fresh. Only a day or so had passed. She could still change her mind. She could still turn her back on her family, on Paris… Or maybe he needed to cross a line that made it real in his head to allow him to move on. 

“This feels a little like taking advantage of you,” he commented.

“Please,” Dunya said, reaching over to place her hands on his shoulders, “If anything I’m taking advantage of you. There’s a mirror behind me, just look at yourself in it.” 

Dmitry rolled his eyes upward, like he did whenever any of the girls made such a comment. It helped put him back in the moment. Then he looked back down at her, placing his hands on the counter. She shook her head, and he took his right hand, placing it loosely on her thigh. He could feel nylon and muscle, unlike the smooth softness of Anya’s.

Perhaps there was a method to Dunya’s madness, and it was better to do this here then when he went to do it for real and couldn’t stop constantly comparing everything to Anya. Maybe Anya shouldn’t be his only comparison. 

He didn’t want to have a reason that he would ever know anyone else that way.

She was the one walking away from him. 

Dmitry focused back on Dunya, keeping himself from pulling away again as the undercurrent of electricity connected them.

He could hear Anya’s voice in the back of his head, taunting that she had told himself, knew that he would always turn to one of the girls the moment they were done. Then him, reminding himself this wasn’t anything he had ever had any serious thought about while he was together and was now just opening himself up to new opportunities that came his way.

Just like she had with her grandmother and Paris and her sister. 

Dunya leaned in towards him, and he braced himself, but she simply placed a kiss on his forehead. 

“It can’t be me,” she whispered. “But take your time.” 

He nodded, but closed his eyes as her mouth placed a trail of kisses down his jawline, below his ear. His heart raced, his blood pounded. His thumb moved against her thigh. “Okay,” he breathed. Dmitry opened his eyes to see her tilted her head up towards him and he captured her lips in a kiss. Dunya met him with every movement, but allowed him to take the lead. It was different, but the same. 

“See,” she said as they pulled apart, “It’ll get less painful in a moment.” 

Dmitry nodded again, but wasn’t entirely convinced. His thumb continued to stroke circles against her thigh. His gaze remained on her lips. He didn’t know how his body felt so alive and numb at the same time. 

He kissed her again, the war between the feeling of being alive and being numb pushing out the muscle memory his exgirlfriend. Dunya’s legs wrapped around his waist, his hand slid under her dress, her hands were in his hair. She tasted of the champagne and scotch they had been drinking throughout the day. 

He could feel the cells of his body try to merge and build him into this new Dmitry. He truly didn’t know who he was without Anya and that should’ve terrified him far sooner than now. 

“The coast is probably clear now,” Dunya told him, as she untangled herself from him. She looked flushed and a bit breathless. 

Dmitry stole a glance at himself in the mirror at last, and saw he looked about the same. How unfamiliar his body looked and felt at that moment. “Thank you.” 

She laughed, as she opened the bathroom door and looked both ways. “Always happy to help in anyway I can.” She winked at him before stepping out and aside to let him back out in the hallway. 

“I think I still need to hideout for awhile,” he told her, looking back in the direction of the party. He wasn’t ready for Anya to interpret him as having moved on or still stuck on her.

Dunya nodded, “Don’t go off too far, I’m going to go find Polly and Marfa.” 

She didn’t wait around to see if he’d make that promise he wouldn’t keep.


	4. Chapter 4

_“I don't want to be in love with someone I can't have...” Dmitry waved his hand, unsure of how the words were forming. Love wasn’t a word or concept he had been familiar with for about ten years now. Not since his father died. His hand dropped down, all his defense mechanisms failing, and surrendering the fight, “...for the rest of my life.”_

There were few moments in his life where Dmitry could so clearly see the lines of fate split and count as a turning point. A pivotal moment. The imprisonment and subsequent death of his father was the first. Even at the age of nine, he had been very aware that where his life was headed had pivoted into a separate direction. The moment he had confessed his love to Anya, had been another, and her chasing him down and pulling him into her world. All while he had seen the end point so clearly moments before, as he stood there ready to leave. But then she had grabbed him, and the world blurred around him and the only thing that mattered was this girl, so petite and bright, had loved him. No obstacle seemed like it could withstand the force of the love that Anya sent out into the world. Which was probably true, until the obstacle was her. 

And now, here, tonight, as his lips had slid over Dunya’s. It wasn’t the same, in the way, that he was overcome by love as a force. But rather, a melancholy acceptance that nothing would be as it once was. 

Anya, once a rash and brave girl, had matured into someone who considered her every move, and made rational decisions based on them. She did not go into things lightly. 

He had tried to stay at the party when Dunya had gone off to find the other girls. But it had felt claustrophobic, as though at any moment he could run into Anya and be confronted with who they were to each other after the past nine years. 

After it had initially happened, he had wandered around the cities, and had called her six times before she had answered. 

_”I’m not going to change my mind, Dmitry,” she had answered the phone softly. “Just give me a couple of days, I’ll be out of the apartment. I really need to do this.”_

Then the soft click of the phone hanging up before the call disconnected. He still wasn’t certain what this was. Them breaking up? Her going to Paris? This overwhelming need for an identity outside of the ones they had been inhabiting? All of the above. 

He couldn’t take the conversation that came next, and maybe that made him a coward. Or maybe that made him respecting her wishes. So he had fled.

Dmitry had bummed a cigarette off someone going back into the party, and had ended up here, at a park. Now he stared up a starless night, and the puffs of air from breathing and the puffs of smoke mingled together above him. 

Tomorrow will be another day, and the next day yet another, and so it went. Time would go easier, Vlad had told him, but tonight Vlad was off at the Romanov party, planning on proposing to Lily. They were not in the same places in their life anymore. 

Though, they had once been. Dmitry had a ring, too, tucked away in the corner of his desk. He had been waiting for the moment to bring it out, but the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was an endless parade of crises regarding the party, a merry go round of Romanov siblings, stopping in town to visit, or because they needed something before the end of the year. He was used to losing Anya for about a month every year in this swirl of commotion. 

The day after Christmas, however, had always been just them. Every single family member on her side had been satisfied by her presence, every single party was over (it was Lily who always threw a New Years party, and she did not possess the chaotic nature of the Romanovs), and it was just them in their tiny but cozy apartment. Pajamas on all day, phones turned off, and a constant stream of movies playing in the background. That seemed the moment to wait for. 

A part of him wondered if perhaps she had come across the ring and that’s what had set off this series of events. He would probably never know. 

“Sudayev,” he could hear the whisper shouted across the lawn. “We’ve been calling you.” 

Dmitry sat up on the bench, and watched as the three girls made their way over to them. All in various states of uneasiness on heels, and intoxication. 

“My phone is on silent.” He resisted the urge now, to check it. There was a sharp pain when looking at it and the lack of contact from Anya.

“Mitya,” Paulina said, sliding behind him on the bench, and reaching around him to pluck the cigarette from his hands. “You left before the best part of the party.” 

He could only imagine what could’ve amused Paulina to the current level she was at. “Did Vaganov reveal he’s had a personality this entire time after all?”

Dunya giggled, sitting in front of him on the bench. “It’s even better than that.”

Paulina reached over and passed the cigarette over to Dunya, who took a drag off of it. Marfa hung back, a few feet away from the bench, her arms crossed over her leather jacket. “I caught Gleb with his pants down ...literally.” She rested her elbows on Dmitry’s shoulders. She was vibrating with excitement from telling this story. He could not believe he would have any interest in Gleb Vaganov’s sex life. “And guess who had his legs wrapped around him at the time?”

Dunya jumped up, stretching her arms out to...oh. “Our very own Marfa Spektor!” 

Dmitry coughed, choking slightly on the secondhand smoke surrounding him now. “Wait, what?” 

Paulina clapped, pleased with his reaction. Marfa was less so pleased with his reaction, and rolled her eyes upward, “Oh my god, you guys, it’s not even a big deal.” 

“You were fucking Gleb Vaganov,” Dunya informed her, as though Marfa wasn’t aware. “And then,” she turned her attention onto Dmitry, telling the second part to him, “It comes out, it’s not even the first time it’s happened.” 

Dmitry squinted into the darkness of the night, the only light coming from a street light a yard away. “Who are you?” 

Marfa shrugged, “We’ve hooked up a couple of times. Who cares?”

“I care,” Paulina and Dunya said at the same time, and then looked at each other and laughed. 

“You have to tell us everything,” Paulina told her, “I can’t believe you kept a secret from us.” 

“Please don’t,” Dmitry asked, holding his hand up. And he could believe that. Marfa was a fortress when she so choose. She just said outrageous things and admitted to stuff that people wouldn’t normally say so she just gave off the appearance of an open book.

“Mitya’s right,” Marfa said, finally stepping closer to them on the bench. “Let’s talk about something else than my terrible taste in hook ups.” 

Sensing the topic of conversation could easily lead to Anya, and how he currently felt. Which was still heavy, melancholy and vaguely in denial. Mostly he felt exhausted by it. The weight of the truth burdening him, Dmitry took pity on Marfa.

“Dunya and I made out,” he offered.

“ _What_?” Paulina screeched in his ear, and pressed his hand against it. He may never hear again. “Never mind about Gleb, this I must hear everything about.”

Dunya leaned back, as she thought about it, “You know what, Polly, I don’t kiss and tell.” 

“God was I the only one who didn’t get action at this party?” Paulina muttered to herself, before she got up. Dunya stood up as well and then began to run, before kicking off her heels to get ahead of where Paulina was. 

Marfa sighed, and took a seat next to Dmitry as the two other chased after each other in the snow.

“What a night,” she said. She turned to look at him. “How are you doing?” 

“You’re supposed to be my friend that doesn’t ask me,” Dmitry pointed out, and she smirked at that.

“Okay,” she agreed, and held out her hand. “Give me your phone.”

Dmitry pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to her, but still asked, “What are you doing?”

Marfa typed in a passcode, and he winced when it unlocked easily. He used to be better than this. “Changing your lock screen.” 

His lock screen was still a photo from him and Anya on vacation in California three years before that. He gave a small nod, all that he managed. 

“Polly! Dunya! Get over here, we’re going to give Dmitry something pretty to stare at,” Marfa called over to them. 

Dunya and Paulina came back over. Their hair sprinkled with fresh snow, and their cheeks flushed from the cold. They crouched behind them, as Marfa lined the shot up to include all four of them and took the photo. Once it was set, she handed back to him. He looked at the clock on it, the time some time now nearing three am, and the photo of the four of them looking slightly wild and crazed, but utterly themselves. 

It wasn’t the worst way to begin a new chapter. 

“I’m ready to sleep for at least three days,” Dmitry announced, standing up, and offering his hand to Marfa to help her up from the bench.”

“Please,” Paulina agreed emphatically, “I am ready for comfy clothes and heat.” 

“And food, there was nothing at that party except alcohol,” Dunya said. 

Dmitry wrapped an arm around Marfa as they walked back towards her apartment. He lowered his voice and asked, “Gleb? Really?”

She shoved at his side, “Ask me about it again, and I’ll start asking about your feelings.”

That managed to make him laugh. 

Daylight would be breaking soon.


	5. Epilogue: Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh i could recognize anywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i broke this epilogue up into two parts for...reasons

_Three years later..._

Anastasia Romanov turned the corner, and the first thing she heard was laughter. Laughter that was an echo of a memory that transformed her from 30 back to 18. That laughter brought her back to being an orphaned girl with a sketchy childhood and a confused memory, and back to the name of Anya. She had grown to resent that girl, and all she represented- the unnecessary struggle, the time that had been stripped from her and her family, the poverty and the overwhelming feeling of not being wanted. This laughter reminded her of a different Anya, a young woman who knew how to survive and was coming into her own when everything she thought had been true had been pulled from under her. The Anya she had clung to for nearly a decade when she found her name to be Anastasia instead. 

It was something she hadn’t thought she had struggled with anymore, she had shed identities with a surprising ease, and she had cut all ties with it when she and her sister, Maria, had packed up and left for Paris to be with their grandmother. She hadn’t looked back, because that wasn’t the way to survive. 

She took a deep breath, and stepped into the room. She saw him before he saw her. For some reason, she had expected him to be just as she had left him. Not the night of the break up, where emotions had been high and she could only remember images with the blurred vision of tears. But the times before that. Hair a bit too long, dimples in his cheeks from smiling, clear brown eyes. 

Some of those features hadn’t and wouldn’t change, but his hair was cut shorter than she could ever remember. Not too short, but shorter than he had worn it in the nine years they had spent together. ‘A haircut is just a waste of money’ he would say, and would never go as much as was recommended. (‘A scam,’ he would say, ‘I know how to recognize one’) and Anya had taken to cutting it for him. But she was always afraid to cut too much. 

Anastasia had no idea what would make him cut his hair shorter, which was a stupid, little thing to be upset about not knowing. When she had no reason to be upset. She was not a Time Lord. She couldn’t leave home, and go on a journey of her own, and land a time machine back to when she had left. She had given up the right to continue to know him like that. 

She hadn’t pined for the past three years. She had mourned, but it was hard to catch a forward momentum in a new city, a new country, with just her sister and grandmother with her most of the time. Most importantly, the French had not cared so much about her ‘fascinating story’. A kidnapping she did not recall, a stolen childhood that was mostly left unremembered, and all the bitterness that had ebbed and flowed with it. 

Reunited with her family, she had been told over and over again by neighbors, friends, the media, she must be so, so grateful. And she was. But in a weird way, she wasn’t certain if grateful was the correct word when she hadn’t spent years knowing what she was missing. All she had was a vague dream that someone out there must want her. Then she had met Dmitry, and that dream had formed into something else at the same time the original dream had come true. 

In France, they had just seen her as another bored, privileged American. She had never known how much she had been suffocating until she was set free. 

“I’ve got an errand to run,” She could see a family mass of dark brown curls peek around a corner. Neither of them still saw her. Which was for the best, given that the first thing Anastasia didn’t want to be confronted with in New York, amidst seeing her ex boyfriend for the first time in three years, was Marfa Spektor. (Marfa Vaganov, now, though she still couldn’t quite fathom that.) Marfa had always looked at her as though she was gum at the bottom of her shoe, nothing worthy of coming near Dmitry. She had looked at Anastasia’s every move as though she would just break Dmitry’s heart. In the end, she had been right. “Can you finish this up on your own, Dima?” 

She involuntarily winced at that, it used to be that no one else had called him Dima except for her since his father when he was young. ‘I need you to have more than me’ is something she once said to him. 

It was easier to deal with in theory than to see it in practice. 

Dmitry waved off Marfa, and Anastasia counted to ten before making her presence known. They were going to have to see each other at some point during this wedding weekend. She wondered now, if she should have reached out to prepare them both better. There was no preparing for this.

She couldn’t remember ever being this nervous to see Dmitry. Not even back when he had been a stranger she was meeting for the first time. 

“Hey,” she said, because was there truly an appropriate way to greet a person who had been your world for a third of your life at one point. 

Dmitry looked up from what he had been scribbling down, and a smile lit up his face. This was why she had run away so far and so fast after their break up. And kept her distance. Like a coward, she hadn’t wanted to deal with the raw emotion afterwards. The awkwardness, the bitterness. Time had curved sharp edges. 

“An-” he shook his head, “Anastasia, hey. I had heard you might around eventually.” 

She found herself wincing again. “You’ve never called me Anastasia.” 

Her family had never been big on hearing her be called Anya. They considered it a name that the people that had stolen her had given her, and it just continuously opened up wounds. It was a transition, but with Dmitry she had always felt more like Anya than Anastasia. He didn’t call her Anya or Anastasia around her parents, though, and had always gone with some diminutive or another for her full name. 

Dmitry had come around, and there was a slight hesitation, so she took the first half of a step forward, and he leaned down, wrapping her in a quick hug. “I’ve heard it’s the preferred name these days.” 

She waved that off, “It’s just a name.”

Except, her name had never just been her name. 

He didn’t call her out on it though, instead just nodded, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m sorry about your grandmother, I meant to reach out or send flowers, but things in my own life got a little crazy.” 

Her grandmother had passed away the year before. So now it was just Anastasia and Maria in Paris. And soon, Maria would be moving to a flat with her fiance. And Anastasia was back in New York.

“I appreciate the thought,” she said, and felt guilty that he knew more about her life already than she had kept tabs on his.

Her sisters had stopped offering to give up any information they knew, six months after the break up. Lily gave up soon after, and now it was only Vlad who occasionally asked if she wanted to know. Originally she had said no, out of a sense of self preservation. Now it was no, out of habit. 

And here they were face to face, and she felt like he was a test she had forgotten to study for. 

Dmitry nodded, and a silence fell between them. And lingered. Maybe she should go. 

“I watched the movie about me the other night,” is what she confessed instead. Technically, there were two movies about her kidnapping and survival and reunion with her family. One was a hastily put together Lifetime movie with Betty Cooper from Riverdale as her, and some guy who had starred in some music videos as Dmitry, with Jason Priestly as Vlad. It was terrible and over dramatic, and nowhere near what had happened. That movie had portrayed her and Dmitry as having a one night stand and then coming up with a plan to reunite her with her family, which was nowhere near the way things had happened. “The Netflix one, I mean.” 

The Netflix one had come out the year before, and had been rather popular on the awards circuit. It reunited Saoirse Ronan and Timothee Chalamet as her and Dmitry, respectively. It had been well written and moving, and a shadow of the events that occured. She had her social media locked up since the first media frenzy, when she had been reunited with her family, and her not living in America at the time had helped it all stay away from her. 

She had given in, finally, and watched it the night before she left to fly back to New York. Maria had begged her to stay away from it. The past can be put too much on a pedestal, she had warned her. 

“You hadn’t seen it before?” He sounded surprised, it had been in preproduction before they broken up. “They made me out to be far nobler than I actually was.” 

Dmitry- or Dimitri, as they had spelled it in the movie, and had also given him no last name (it was the most she could accomplish to help with his privacy, though he had gone off the social media grid as well when they had gotten together), had said a lot of intense, pretty and romantic speeches. 

“You had your moments,” she told him, with a soft smile.

He shrugged, “Marfa likes to quote that last speech to me at least one every other month. It used to be once a week when it first came out, but she’s calmed down a bit.” 

“Can I ask you a question?” 

Dmitry glanced around at first, and clenched his jaw, but then said, “Yes.” 

“Are…” Anastasia bit her lip as she thought to ask this gently, “Are Marfa and Gleb really a thing?”

He laughed, and she could feel the ice and tension crack around them. 

“It’s been a weird couple of years,” Dmitry confessed to her. “I still haven’t come to terms with it, and this all started three years ago.” 

She blinked, wondering what exactly she had missed or how much could have changed in such a short time, as she had still been in the City, three years prior. “Three years ago?”

He nodded, “We first found out about it at Vaganov’s Christmas party.” 

Weirder still, “I was at that party, you weren’t.” Why hadn’t she heard of this?

Normally, she would’ve been at her family’s Christmas gala, and she had been. But every corner had just reminded her of every year in the past in attendance with Dmitry, and it had been suffocating and she had run away. She couldn’t go back to the apartment, as that had only felt worse. Eventually she had gone to a place that held little to no memories for her. 

“Oh well,” Dmitry stepped back. Then took a breath. “We should take a walk.” 

They could end this now, the slate was clean and they owed each other nothing. They had gotten the worst over, and had seen each other. Exchanged pleasantries. She could bow out gracefully, and go back to her parents house and finish readying for this weekend. 

Instead, she nodded, tucking her hands in the pocket of her jacket, and he followed grabbing a jacket from a nearby barstool.

“Yeah,” she said, “Let’s go for a walk.”


	6. Epilogue: Part II

It was a deceptively beautiful winter’s day in New York. The snow fell against her nose, and along her shoulders, and Anastasia felt home. Walking along the sidewalk, next to Dmitry, she could remember that feeling of being eighteen and absolutely certain that New York was home. Later, she had thought it was a destination, but not the final stopping point. Now she wasn’t really certain where she had been heading all along. Not like Dmitry, he had always had such a strong sense of self.

Maybe that had been the source of her tension with the three girls from his childhood that had stumbled into their lives. Marfa, Dunya and Paulina all had a sense of purpose she felt like she had lost once she had hit the finish line. 

“I’m moving back to New York,” she announced, after they had walked a block or so in silence. 

He looked over at her, thoughtful, but did not show any other emotions. “Find what you were looking for in Paris?” 

It didn’t come out judgemental or resentful, like it could’ve. Anastasia had spent so much time worrying about how he would handle things after they were broken up, it had never occurred to her that he could just dust himself off and carry on. Maybe she had been the one so caught up in their relationship that she couldn’t see outside life from it. 

Dmitry was a survivor, it was what he had been doing long before they had ever met. 

“I don’t even know what I was looking for in Paris,” she admitted. She had been seeking an abstract concept. “But it feels like it’s served its purpose.” Then, she added, “Maria got engaged.” 

“I heard,” Dmitry nodded. At her confused look, “Alexei told me last week.”

Right. Her younger brother had taken to Dmitry far faster than any of her family members (including her, as they had gotten off to a...rough start). It wouldn’t surprise her if he had been the Romanov who kept in touch with her ex-boyfriend after she had left for Paris. Her brother had been so young when Anastasia had been kidnapped, he had no real memories of her except for when she had come back as an adult. 

Sometimes, Alexei was the most relaxing family member for her to be around. 

“He and Vlad have grown quite close,” Dmitry continued on, by way of explanation. 

“Right,” Anastasia smiled. She could remember her brother mentioning Vlad here and there but it hadn’t fully registered. 

Dmitry’s phone chirped and he looked down at the screen, composing a quick text and slipping it back into his pocket. It was eerily quiet for this part of Manhattan, and she hated every awkward moment the silence brought. 

“The girls dragged me to Gleb’s party,” he spoke suddenly, and she blinked before she remembered their conversation before they had stepped outside. “I saw you there and hid in the bathroom.” 

“Oh,” she responded. She tried to remember that party, several years before and her mind tried to place him there in memory but she hadn’t been aware. Though, she could now recall Gleb acting more stilted and awkward than normal. “I had been at my parent’s party. And it just… was overwhelming.” She hadn’t thought the ballroom where her parents hosted events would’ve reminded her so much of Dmitry, but every past Christmas gala had played out in front of her eyes, the two of them ghosts twirling in front of her eyes. “My friend Katya dragged me over to the Vaganov’s for a change of scenery.” 

Her sisters had been sympathetic, but none of them would’ve dared to leave their parents’ party. Katya, however, had looped her arm through Anastasia’s and demanded they sneak out and find another party. She had only known of Gleb’s. Most of that night was a hazy memory. She had expected to feel sad after the break up, but the weight and reality of it seemed to crash into her that night. 

The weight hadn’t lifted from her until she had landed in Paris. 

“I didn’t mean to crash your night,” she continued on. “Had I known…”

Dmitry shook his head, “It was an interesting night.” 

It felt, now, like the fork in the road. Where their two lives had diverged. The Dmitry she had known was gone after that night. 

She wondered how fast he had moved on. It was an unfair thought to have, three years later and when she had been the one to initiate the break up. 

“And how have you been?” Anastasia asked, though it seemed like inadequate way to word asking what he had been doing for the past three years, and unsure if she should apologize for not having kept up.

“I’ve been good,” he said, and this time he met her eyes when he smiled, so she knew he was telling the truth. “I went a bit wild after you left,” she wasn’t surprised. He had been young, attractive and charming. Their attachment had barely kept others at bay when they were together, so she could only imagine the opportunities that had presented themselves to him once he was single. “But I’ve really calmed down the past year or so.” 

She bit her lip before asking the question she shouldn't be, “Girlfriend?” 

“No,” he said, and shrugged. “Not really.” Well, that was perfectly vague. Not that she needed to know or should’ve asked. But he did clarify, “There’s been someone. But it got complicated so now we’re focusing on...other things.” 

There was a time when Dmitry had told her everything, unprompted. She had cheated the past three years with the fallout of their relationship, by hiding away in another country. He had developed into a guarded person with her. 

It made sense, but was still so strange to her. 

“And you?” He stole a glance at her as he asked.

“Currently on a break from my European whirlwind romances,” she said, breezily and with a wave of her hand. She wished it had been as exciting as it sounded. She had dated someone for a year, but it had never felt serious. But it had been light and fun.The rest of her romantic life had been Maria setting her up on dates. Some lasted past the first dates, but quite a few had been dead in the water. 

“I’ve missed you,” Dmitry said softly, coming to a stop, and she stopped as well. “But you can’t come back and expect us to fit exactly as we used to.” 

“I know,” she started. It wasn’t as though she was expecting, or even hoping, for them to get back together. The trouble was, she never learned to relate to him as anything other than Dmitry, her boyfriend. There hadn’t been much time, if she was honest, between him being a stranger, to a rough beginning as acquaintances, to friendship, to love. “I-”

He interrupted her, which she was slightly glad because she didn’t know how to say what she didn’t know exactly what to say. “I was always afraid to bring it up when we were dating, because I didn’t want to lose you. But--” he shrugged, because he had lost her anyways. “I know you were constantly being torn between the life you had known and reconciling it with the life you actually had. And I know you wanted to please your family, especially your parents and your sisters, and grandmother. And I also know I didn’t make it always easy for you, and I am truly sorry for that.” Anya. Anastasia. Malenkaya. Nastya. Anyok. So many names she had for one person. ‘Just be yourself,’ Dmitry had always told her. ‘They’ll love you anyway.’ 

She had more of a sense of self at the age of 18, as an orphan, than she had been at the same age as the lost Romanov heiress. Her sense of reality had truly shattered and Dmitry had been the one thing she could rely on to know who he was, and draw courage from that, and she had clung to him.

“You tried to help me,” she said. Everyone tried to help her, in their own way. 

“Yes,” he agreed. “But I was also selfish and wanted to keep you in my life. So my motives weren’t always pure.” 

“You loved me,” Anastasia pointed out. 

“I did,” he agreed. “And you loved me.” They started walking again. “But I understand why we had to break up. It felt awkward before...and now...but I wanted to get it out in the open to help clear that, there’s no resentment here.” 

“Thank you,” she said. Though, she wished he would clarify because now all she was seeing was life in hindsight and no longer remembered many of those reasons. Or they seemed to have been illusions. “How is the wedding going?”

Dmitry closed his eyes and tilted his head back, before opening his eyes again. “Lily’s been fine...it’s Vlad that’s been a nightmare.”

As though, on cue, his phone chirped, and he slid it out of his pocket again to respond before putting it away again. 

She laughed at that, “He’s a man of refined taste.” 

“Thankfully Lily can afford to bankroll him, though I suggested she restrict him to an allowance once they’re married.” He took out his phone again, this time seeming to initiate a message to whoever. She was trying not to be overly nosy about his life. “Being Marfa’s Best Man was much easier. I just had to drive her to City Hall.” 

Anastasia shook her head, still trying to picture Marfa and Gleb. “Look at you- professional Best Man.” 

“It’s on my resume,” he quipped. “I should probably get back to the hotel.” 

“It was good seeing you,” she said and she meant it. “I’ll see you at the wedding.” 

Dmitry started to turn around to walk away, but then stopped, “Hey Anya?” She smiled at the use of the nickname. “Make sure to save me a dance.” 

She would, of course. The couldn’t fit together as before, but that also doesn’t mean there wasn’t a possibility of them forming some new shape in the future.

Whatever that may be.


End file.
